I am a Burmese exile taking a near-permanent refuge in New York and Sydney. Here are my essays about Burma and anything else I feel like writing about. And posting the articles I like from selected sites. Bridging Burma to the world this Blog is more of a Politically-Oriented Literary Blog than a Plain News Blog or a Sophisticated Thoughts Blog.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

3 Americans Prevented Massacre On Paris-Bound Train

PARIS — A Shot, a Glimpse of an AK-47,
and U.S. Servicemen Pounced on Gunman on Train to France. It was 5:45 p.m., a
normal Friday afternoon on the sleek high-speed train that takes high-level
European diplomats, businesspeople, tourists and ordinary citizens between
Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris.

Less than an hour away from Paris, a French passenger got up from his
seat to use the toilets at the back of the carriage. Suddenly, in front of him
rose a slightly built man. Across the man’s chest, in a sling, was an automatic
rifle of the kind favored by jihadists the world over: an AK-47. The passenger
threw himself on the man. The gun went off, once, twice, several times. Glass
shattered. A bullet hit a passenger.

The man with the gun kept going down
the carriage, holding his AK-47 and a Luger pistol. In a pocket was a sharp
blade capable of inflicting grievous harm. He had at least nine cartridges of
ammunition, enough for serious carnage.

Alek Skarlatos, a specialist in the
National Guard from Oregon vacationing in Europe with a friend in the Air
Force, Airman First Class Spencer Stone and another American, Anthony Sadler,
looked up and saw the gunman. Mr. Skarlatos, who was returning from a
deployment in Afghanistan, looked over at the powerfully built Mr. Stone, a
martial arts enthusiast. “Let’s go, go!” he shouted.

Mr. Stone went after the heavily armed
gunman and, with his friends, pounded him to the floor of the train carriage.
“I mean, adrenaline mostly just takes over,” Mr. Skarlatos said in a Skype
interview on Saturday that appeared on television, barely 12 hours after it was
over. “I didn’t realize, or fully comprehend, what was going on.”

Their actions saved many lives on the
train, which was packed with over 500 passengers, according to French
officials. The attack took place in Oignies, near the historic town of Arras.

“I heard a gunshot,” Chris Norman, a
British consultant who helps African entrepreneurs find financing in Europe,
said at a news conference Saturday afternoon. “I heard a window shatter. I saw
an employee run down the train. I saw a man holding an AK-47.”

Alek Skarlatos.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve of
France identified the suspect Saturday as a 26-year-old Moroccan man known to
the Spanish authorities as a member of “the radical Islamist movement.” Mr.
Cazeneuve, however, cautioned that the French police had not fully confirmed
his identity. French officials had identified the man as a security risk, but
he was not under surveillance and had apparently spent little time in France.

By Saturday evening, having left the
hospital in Lille where he was operated on after being severely cut by the
suspect, Mr. Stone and his friends were being hailed as heroes by French
officials and citizens. Some were proposing them for the Legion of Honor.
President François Hollande of France had already invited them to Élysée Palace
for a congratulatory meeting. The French passenger who initially encountered
the attacker was also lauded by French officials for his bravery, but was not
named.

President Obama called the three
Americans “to commend and congratulate them for their courage and quick
action,” a spokesman, Eric Schultz, said. And Mr. Hollande spoke with Mr. Obama
by phone, “thanking him warmly” for the “exemplary conduct of the American
citizens” who had prevented “an extremely serious act,” the Élysée said in a
statement.

There was no thought of heroism as the
men sprang into action, however. “What happened and what we did, it just feels
unreal,” Mr. Skarlatos said in the Skype interview. “It felt like a dream, or a
movie.”

In the train carriage, Mr. Stone was
the first to act, jumping up at the command of Mr. Skarlatos. He sprinted
through the carriage toward the gunman, running “a good 10 meters to get to the
guy,” Mr. Skarlatos said. Mr. Stone was unarmed; his target was visibly
bristling with weapons.

Spencer Stone.

With Mr. Skarlatos close behind, Mr.
Stone grabbed the gunman’s neck, stunning him. But the gunman fought back
furiously, slashing with his blade, slicing Mr. Stone in the neck and hand and
nearly severing his thumb. Mr. Stone did not let go.

The gunman “pulled out a cutter,
started cutting Spencer,” Mr. Norman, the British consultant, told television
interviewers. “He cut Spencer behind the neck. He nearly cut his thumb off.”

Mr. Skarlatos grabbed the gunman’s
Luger pistol and threw it to the side. Incongruously, the gunman yelled at the
men to return it, even as Mr. Stone was choking him. A train conductor rushed
up and grabbed the gunman’s left arm, Mr. Norman recalled. The AK-47 had fallen
to the gunman’s feet. Mr. Skarlatos picked it up and “started muzzle-thumping
him in the head with it,” he said.

By then, an alarm had sounded on the
train. Jean-Hugues Anglade, a well-known French actor, had broken the glass to
set it off, cutting himself in the process. The train began to slow down. Julia
Grunberg, a Brazilian student living in the Netherlands, looked up from her
book. “It was all very normal,” she said. “Then, suddenly, the alarm started ringing.
We were very fast; then we were very slow.”

Mr. Anglade accused the train personnel
on Saturday of having fled the scene of the struggle, abandoning the passengers
and cowering in the engine car. He told the French news media that the behavior
of the staff had been “terrible” and “inhuman.”

Mr. Norman and Mr. Sadler had joined in
the efforts to subdue the gunman, who “put up quite a bit of a fight,” Mr.
Norman recalled at the news conference in Arras on Saturday. “My thought was,
‘I’m probably going to die anyway, so let’s go.’ Once you start moving, you’re
not afraid anymore.”

Mr. Stone, wounded and bleeding, kept
the suspect in a chokehold. “Spencer Stone is a very strong guy,” Mr. Norman
said. The suspect passed out. Mr. Norman busied himself binding him up with a
tie.

Mr. Skarlatos, the AK-47 in hand, began
to patrol the carriages, looking for other gunmen. He made a series of
startling discoveries: The suspect’s guns had malfunctioned, and he had not had
the competence to fix them.

Muslim terrorist.

“He had pulled the trigger on the AK.
The primer was just faulty, so the gun didn’t go off, luckily,” Mr. Skarlatos
said. “And he didn’t know how to fix it, which is also very lucky.” In
addition, the gunman had not been able to load his own handgun: “There was no
magazine in it, so he either dropped it accidentally or didn’t load it
properly, so he was only able to get what appeared to be one shot off,” Mr.
Skarlatos said.

Bleeding heavily, Mr. Stone went to the
aid of a gunshot victim, Mr. Sadler said. “Even though he was injured, he went
to help the other man who was injured,” he said. “Without his help, he would
have died.”

Slowly, the train pulled into the Arras
station. “Somebody came in,” Ms. Grunberg recalled, and told passengers, “You
have to get off the train.” “While I was leaving the train,” she said, “I saw
someone in a wheelchair, police dogs. It was all very confusing.”

All those who took part realized it
could have turned out far worse. “I mean, if that guy’s weapon had been
functioning properly,” Mr. Skarlatos said, “I don’t even want to think about
how it would have went.”